The COMPLEAT Collected Short SFF Stories

by Sterling E. Lanier

  "Relax, everybody. This thing is timed. We were supposed to go back in one hour, and we are almost at it."

  Sure enough, in a minute or so, the weird humming started again, and we could feel that strange tingling all through our bodies.

  Eventually it stopped again, and we could hear the catches being freed on the other side of the original entry port.

  When they opened we looked into the muzzles of two more bazookas, plus some assorted machine guns and a rifle or two, all of which slowly dropped as it sank in we had brought back no after-dinner guests.

  Then Sally pushed up to the front and looked at us, and with him were Jones, Motley, and a guy in a white coat with a black bag. All their jaws sunk when they saw us, especially me, with my new re-encrusted suit.

  "It's a little like hairy back there, boss," said Leo from behind me. "But we're all OK, thanks to Goldy and that tank buster of his." He slapped Goldy on the back. "They all behaved real good, but we need to have a little talk before anybody else gets sent back. Some very special equipment ought to go first, is what I mean." He paused as if searching for what to say next. Then it came.

  "Maybe we could get a loan from the Second Armored at Fort Hood or somewhere?"

  Chapter Two

  IT TURNED out the guy in the white coat was a doctor after all. Maybe an unfrocked abortionist or something, but he ran us through all kinds of tests, blood and otherwise, and we were even kept locked up until the tests were all over. I joked with the others about being astronauts, but sobered up when Ellen-Sue, of all people, pointed out we had been a hell of a lot further away than any of the space jockeys.

  Actually, when some of the implications began to sink in, they scared the piss out of me. Suppose we had brought back some disease or bug that didn't exist now? Compared to the precautions the United States takes over returning astronauts, what we went through was kindergarten stuff. We could have infected the whole island the minute we got out of the box!

  I mentioned this to Leo over cards and he shrugged. "Yeah. I thought of that, too. But the doc says that the bugs back then were much too primitive to hurt us. Only a ninety-nine percent chance, he says."

  One percent, I thought to myself and flinched.

  Well, we finished the tests, but more unnamed experts of various kinds quizzed us. One showed us pictures of various dinosaurs, each worse than the one before. And, sure enough, we spotted old Nose-horn right off. His name was Monocolonius (I wrote it down), and the three long-necked paddle-feet jobs were called plesiosaurs. The shark was only a shark, merely four times bigger than the biggest which nibble on you nowadays. This all got the guy with the book very excited and he squared off with twitchy Jones, who was also present.

  "It can't be an island!" he squeaked at Jones. "It is totally impossible, due to weight, especially skull weight, for an animal like this" (which was Nose-horn) "to swim very far, that is if they could swim at all."

  All this crap led to a long egghead argument and they went out together, still gabbling like geese and hand waving. It was amazing how much crazy talent Sally could lay his hands on, I often thought.

  Eventually, after we had all been questioned to death, they let us out and alone, while the former routine began again. I found it very restful, personally. Fighting dinosaurs may look like fun in the flicks, but one hour would last me forever.

  Meanwhile, equipment was still being landed and sent inland. A lot of it made more sense, after what we had been through. One night I heard a lot of clanking and engines and looked out the windows. There was a bunch of square tank-like things going by in the moonlight. Where a tank's turret should be was a shield with a long, thin, skinny gun, looking much too small for the body, sitting up on a mount with a hole for the driver or gunner behind it. My knowledge of United States hardware was World War II vintage, and these were new to me.

  "Multipurpose ONTOS," purred Leo from behind me, making me jump. He had drifted in from his own pad. "They're like tanks, but amphibious and also troop carriers. And that gun doohickey, is a recoil-less rifle. It shoots small shells, like a bazooka, but bigger and ten times as far.

  "So they still think they can handle that bunch of monsters, eh?"

  "Hell, Doakes, they could probably get an atom bomb if they needed to. You think with all the leftover junk from thirty wars floating around, the boss can't take care of some oversized lizards?" He laughed and went away again, leaving me leaning on my elbow until the motor noise died away.

  Two other new things were of note in our lives. A bulletin board appeared with no advance notice, in the big main lounge, and on it every day were clipped bits from newspapers, mostly American, but English too, and sometimes German or French, which I don't read. There were pictures in lots of them. One week's reading was enough to tell the main story. We were rumbled, that is, up to a point.

  Like a shower of mud, mixed with green logs, crushed a house in England. Two people were killed. The logs were from fossil trees, only they were fresh.

  Or 60 tons of sea water washed away an oil rig. Not an offshore oil rig, but one planted in central Canada. When the mess was cleared away, a lot of fish, ripe and stinking, were found which should not have been anything but skeletons in very old rock indeed.

  The one that broke Sally up made me want to vomit, as well as killing him with a dull knife. I've conned people in a mild way all my life, but this was murder. He was giggling over it when I came through the hall, and he waved me over to share the fun. Anything that made him laugh should have been a good enough stop sign.

  A ten-foot high, meat-eating dinosaur had appeared in an Indonesian school yard during recess. It ate two kids and killed twelve others and a teacher before the local army arrived with artillery.

  "This will really keep everybody hopping," he chuckled. "They won't have no time to think about us, baby, none at all." If I'd had the guts, I'd have strangled him on the spot.

  There was other news relating to Sally Tomatoes and Friends, Limited. The United Nations had secret security sessions going, and a world-wide alert was on. The United States, China and Russia, for once, all decided they were all under attack, and even the Arabs and Israel agreed it was neither of them. Castro sent offers of help to everybody, and teams of top scientists were meeting hourly. I had reached such a point of sickness, I almost hoped they would find us and wipe us out with a hydrogen bomb. But Sally had been clever, or someone had. The slant from the papers was that the world was being attacked by mad scientists from outer space! Or from the ancient past or somewhere. Nutty religious groups formed all over, ranging from end-of-the-world idiots to eco-freaks, who said the planet was striking back at polluters and had a giant brain down in its center core! Try to sell anyone on a Syndicate operation and you would have been sent to the nearest funny farm in a jacket laced up the back. All I could do was try and avoid Sally and his laughter, but I was getting less and less sleep. Motley was boozing more and more now, and I let him, but no one seemed to give a damn. They'd sucked him dry by now.

  I have mentioned that a couple of things happened about this time. The other one was a pleasant surprise. Ellen-Sue began to pick up her socks.

  First, I noticed that her hair dye was faded out and that she was neater. She held herself to one drink before chow and began to go swimming and even fishing with us. The bags disappeared from under her eyes and she got a nice tan, mixed with a lot of freckles. What appeared finally was a snappy-looking woman in the early forties, with brown hair (OK, so a little gray) and a cute figure for her age. She was no Raquel Welch, but she was no pig either.

  She quit making drunken passes at anything in pants and was nice and polite. I dunno where her education stopped, but she was no dumb-head, and once I got used to her hog-and-hominy accent, she was fun to talk to. I found myself drifting her way more and more and even tried a pass after a good dinner one night. I got chilled off but quick, but not nasty, either, you know? Just, "You're a nice guy, but nothing doing; let's stay friends." I began
to look at her harder and harder. The Hour of the Dinosaur had really brought on a change, and I don't mean change of life, either.

  To Motley, she was Miss Frost. She looked right through him when he spoke to her, and after a bit he quit trying. He was so ginned up now anyway, I doubt if much really penetrated. He spent most of the day out under a tree, either passed out, bottle in paw or working on it.

  Ellen-Sue and I found we felt the same way about the horror show on the bulletin board. She let me know that this was what had snapped her out of the scummy life she'd been rolling around in and that she felt slow burning was too good for Sally Tomatoes and his buddies. But wrack our brains as we tried, there seemed nothing we could do.

  Meanwhile, the mountains of supplies and building stuff were still unloaded at night and trucked inland; the small army of servants and serfs still padded around mowing lawns, serving food and booze and doing tons of laundry.

  A funny thing happened one evening in connection with these guys though. I heard low voices down near a little beach when I was out walking, and it sounded like the native secret code which I had figured out to be two parts Aztec, or something, and one part bad Spanish. I would have paid no attention, but the voices stopped and a man swung up the slope and passed me in the dark. I was standing still and he never noticed me at all, but I'll be damned if it wasn't Goldy. What was that illiterate slob doing talking the weird native lingo and being so secret about it too? I decided to say nothing and keep an eye on him.

  A few days later, just in case we were all getting too restless or bored, Sally staged another little show. This time it was bingo night, Godfather style, and we all got numbered certificates of deposit in Swiss banks plus keys to open them. I thought they must be counterfeit, but they looked real enough. I had always assumed he was going to knock us all off whenever our use was over, but if these things were real, maybe he felt some gratitude. I didn't like to ask how much was involved, but he told us anyway, with no prompting. I almost fainted because my share was a hundred grand and so was Ellen-Sue's. We all looked stunned and this gave him a big boot.

  "You people never exactly seen what we got here, with the professor's little machine," he confided, while pulling on a foot-long Cuban cigar.

  "Look, how many guys in the world need to cool off once in a while? Not just in the rackets, but South American generals and like that? OK, so the U.N. and Interpol and all the various law people with computers can make it pretty hairy these days, see? But one place they can't go is back in time. So, my friends and I, which financed this whole operation, we sell shares. You can't buy anything permanent, but you can lease space. And nobody without lots of the folding gets in. Everybody gets checked out first, and then they get assessed on two counts, one being what they are good for finance-wise, and second he degree of heat which is on them. Then we figure a scale for that person and back they will go, safe and sound. Neat, huh?"

  "Plus a few million people get killed as a fringe benefit," I couldn't help putting in.

  "So what are you, Doakes, Mr. Sunday School?" He gave me a dirty look, then laughed. "Maybe when you went back, half a big lizard head came up front and helped eat someone here. So you ain't no rose either. We're all in it together, folks, and that's why you ain't going to turn down that lovely money, right?"

  He was right and I felt sick at my stomach. That night I lay awake, staring at the wall and wishing I could make a volcano blow up this rotten business and the whole scumbag crowd, including myself. What had once seemed merely a bad joke was now so filthy sick and nauseating that I now hated my own face in the bathroom mirror.

  Suddenly, I heard a faint knock at my bedroom door. When it came a second time, I slid over and eased it open a crack. I could see Ellen-Sue's face and I felt better all at once. Maybe a little female comfort was just what I needed.

  But when I let her in I got a surprise. She was wearing the same long dress she had on at dinner and behind her in came Leo, in his dark suit, which made me flinch, naturally.

  "Be quiet, Joseph," she hissed, closing the door and locking it. "We got to talk to you. Leo here has somethin' to tell you that's mighty important!"

  Leo checked the window and closed it, lowering the screens. Then he moved over and pulled my hand away from the light switch I was about to turn on.

  "No lights, Doakes. I've checked your room and Ellen-Sue's already. They've been bugged all along, but only with twenty-four hour tapes. That means no one checks them but once a day, understand? And I'm the one who does it. So we're in the clear on that point." His voice had changed, being now very clear and with no mistakes in English. And he was somehow on a first-name basis with Ellen-Sue, which annoyed me a bit. I sat down on the bed and looked at his tall shadow in the dark.

  "I have to trust someone," he said, "and I'm going to gamble on you two. I've been watching you both and this lousy set-up is really getting to you, unless I'm dimmer than I used to be. Right?"

  My mind must have been working quicker than usual, I guess, because I began to see a new picture.

  "Who are you, Leo?" I asked, "a Fed, or some other branch?"

  "Not bad," he said. "Glad your brain is functioning. Yes, I'm an agent. The bureau has been quite interested in Sally for a long time, and it took me two years to get this close to him. But no one ever thought of the van D'Alliance Chronocron, damn your drunken genius of a husband, Ellen-Sue."

  "I know," she said. "I never thought he was worth anything, either, just a meal ticket after too many cheap bars and bad times. I knew he was no good, rat down inside, but I was no prize, either; so I had no decent complaint. Even when he had me sent back with you to that awful place, I guess I deserved it. But not now. Not with those rats killing kids and letting innocent people get eaten up and buried and all."

  I put my hand over her shoulders and pulled her over next to me on the bed. She'd never had much and neither had I and it felt good to know we were being honest. She didn't pull away either.

  "What can we do?" I said, "I think you realize we'll both help. I've trimmed a few marks in my life but not this kind of a thing. It has to be stopped someway, anyway."

  "I don't know, and that's the hell of it. I have no signaling equipment and frankly don't know where we are myself. I think it's the Caribbean somewhere, but I'm not even sure of that. The boats are always tightly guarded by imported muscle, and if I make a move out of line, then all eyes get turned my way. Goldy watches me, I watch him, and everyone watches everyone else. Sally is no Rhodes scholar, but he's damnably clever at hiring technical talent and setting up security arrangements. I simply haven't got one clue as to how to get a message off this island, let alone get off myself. And now we have to move fast, very fast. You see

  "Wait a minute," I cut in, "you should hear a funny thing about your pal, Goldy. It may not mean much, but ..." and I went on to fill him in on Goldy's overheard private chat in the native lingo. This got him very excited indeed.

  "You're sure Doakes, that it was Goldy? No chance of a mistake?"

  "No, it was him. And I saw one of the locals slide off down the rocks a little later. Mean anything?"

  "Maybe a lot. I've always pegged him for a dumb killer, though now and again he gets an odd look in his eyes. But if he can talk this weird native gibberish, then he's not that. But what is he? Not one of our people, for sure." He went silent for a bit, and we waited while he tried to figure it out. After a bit he started again.

  "Look, just keep an eye on him, I don't know what his game is and I can't trust him in case he's one of Sally's deep-cover types. That creep could run the CIA if he were halfway honest. He has a flair for covert operations. Anyway, I started to tell you something else, which is more important. Everyone who wants to use the Chronocron at present has to come here first, OK? But, Jones, or whatever his name is—and he's got to be traced—has found a new gimmick. He's pretty sure he can build other time-gates elsewhere in the world and lock them in to the same area and moment in the past as this one. See
what that means?"

  I thought for a second, but Ellen-Sue beat me to it. "It means no one can any longer, ever stop them at all. If you close one, they go to another or build another one or somethin'. And the varmints and trash keep comin' right out the past and eatin' babies and such!"

  "Right! So for God's sake put on your thinking caps and keep your eyes open! Sally has something big planned for this weekend, though I have no idea what it is." He punched my shoulder, patted her on the head and slipped out. I gave her a small hug and we both sat for a while in the dark without talking. At least we had a friend and some new ideas. The problem now was what to do with them.

  Saturday came around and with it a new big notice on the bulletin board. Everybody was to wear party clothes for a grand hotel opening, and buses and trucks would pick us up at five p.m. that afternoon. I spent the afternoon cleaning and sharpening an old rusty machete I had found a week before on a path. It was so worn down it was only a foot and a half long and a couple of inches wide, but this made it easier to jam into my pants. Sally's parties had a way of turning out rough on the guests, and the machete wasn't much but it was the best I could do.

  The sun started to go down at last and we all met on the terrace. Prominent in front was Sally and with him was none other than Bushveldt Barnstaffel, my beloved former employer. Here he was grinning and cracking jokes and slapping Sally on the back till you wanted to get sick.

  I hadn't seen him around for a couple of weeks, and we had figured out, Ellen-Sue and me, that he was back in the past, building the El Crooko, Hideout Hilton, or at least seeing it was built right. He must have done the job to Sally's approval, because he was also in white jacket and black tie, looking as slimy as his new owner.

  We all piled into some buses and Goldy and Leo sat opposite me. I looked at Goldy's dead, cold eyes and wondered if I'd made a mistake. He looked merely stuffed.

  Eventually we went down the tunnel and the machine door shut on us. This time a ramp was ready and the whole busload ran up and into the thing. It really was a fantastic arrangement, and when I saw Motley, half-gassed and slumped in a corner seat by himself, it seemed impossible it could have come out of that gin-head skull of his.